If you have 1000 subscriptions, your page must be completely full of junk that you’ll never watch? You can’t possibly be watching 1000 videos per week.
That's not the case, but I don't see your logic either.
There are far more than 1000 YouTube channels putting out good content. Far more than 10,000 perhaps. Why would I subscribe to a junk channel? I subscribe to topics or people I liked. Many put out a video or two a year. Some put out a video or two a day. I end up with perhaps about 100 videos a day to skim through the thumbnails/titles of, watch a handful.. happy days.
I'm confused why you'd think I'd watch every video in the first place. Do you follow every single link on HN or read every single tweet in your timeline? I mean, I don't.. and couldn't.
That's certainly one way to use YouTube. It sounds pretty much like cable TV (but with a very low entry cost for producers).
Very often a channel has a really interesting video that I like, but the other 250 videos are 'junk' to me. Subscribing based on that single video would not give me good quality recommendations at all.
I enjoy discovering new videos, channels and topics, not just watching the same people or staying within a bubble of my own making. That's where a recommendation engine is supposed to shine, not fail miserably as it currently does. I always assumed this is how the majority of people use (used?) the platform.
It sounds pretty much like cable TV (but with a very low entry cost for producers).
Broadly, yes. It's like how I watch TV. Hundreds of channels, I look through, pick things I like, watch them. Or even newspapers/magazines (which I still get) - I skim through and read the articles I like, rather than read the entirety of the thing.
I find on YouTube that having such a wide array of subscriptions tunes the recommendations in pretty well so most of them are up my street.
That's where a recommendation engine is supposed to shine, not fail miserably as it currently does. I always assumed this is how the majority of people use (used?) the platform.
I think it's probably a mix. Twitter might be a good demonstration of the dichotomy in approach. Some people are very noisily in support of seeing every single tweet from everyone they follow in chronological order (which surely only scales up to following 100-200 people), yet the algorithmic feed is the default and keeps Twitter pretty useful if you follow thousands.
If you have 1000 subscriptions, your page must be completely full of junk that you’ll never watch? You can’t possibly be watching 1000 videos per week.